Specter and Spirit: Ernst Bloch, Jacques Derrida, and the Work of Utopia (original) (raw)
Related papers
The privatization of hope: Ernst Bloch and the future of Utopia
Contemporary Political Theory, 2015
History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. (Heaney, 1990, pp. 77-78). If Bloch is indeed 'our contemporary', as Žižek affirms in his typically lively Preface, this is because he is, from within his nevertheless expansive utopianism, witness to the manifest failure of hope, time and again and despite its persistence and ubiquity, to attain that which it promises: the revolutionary satisfaction of hunger, redemption, justice and joy-Heimat. Indeed, the ostensible starting point of this book picks up from where Bloch left off. In 1964, in conversation with uneasy ally Adorno, Bloch identifies a 'terrible banalization' of utopia. Adorno concurs, adding that 'utopian consciousness' has suffered a 'strange shrinking' to the extent that 'people are sworn to this world as it is, and have this blocked consciousness vis-à-vis possibility (Bloch and Adorno, 1988, pp. 3-4). The problem is not that humanity has lost its capacity to hunger and hopethere is, as Kafka laments, 'plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope, but not for us' (Benjamin, 1999, p. 166; and referred to by Daly in this volume, p. 195). The crisis of hope is that, contra Seamus Heaney's insurgent rhyming, hope and history have unravelled, that hope has lost its utopian dynamic shaping social, collective and historical agency, becoming, instead, individualized, apoliticalprecisely privatized. This remains, nevertheless, an oddly titled book. Conceived during capitalism's period of triumphal hegemony, but birthed in the context of the 'Second Great Crash' (p. 1), the question of hope's 'privatization' is asserted but not directly confronted; indeed, it is belied by this rich collection of engaged essays. The collection opens by considering Bloch's ontology of 'not-yet-being', rehearsed with Žižekian speed in his Preface. For Bloch, reality itself remains ontologically incomplete (a claim that Žižek finds echoed in Heisenberg and Bohr's
The Future of Work—Lessons from the History of Utopian Thought
CUSP Working Paper No 13, 2018
This paper aims to contribute towards the development of a political economy of work fit for purpose in a world of social and environmental limits. In order to get beyond today’s dominant conceptions of work in a growth-based capitalism, Simon Mair, Angela Druckman and Tim Jackson explore the role of work in historical utopias.
A Dialogue between Paul Ricoeur and Ernst Bloch on Utopia and the Future of Humanity
Aside from repeating experience of human sufferings and despair, one thing we all commonly share is: The hope for a brighter tomorrow were the end of struggles and the end of human sufferings have been abated. This is what we called the vision of " utopia ". Utopia is a place where it a future world, an ideal society by which it is perfect. Common visionaries and philosophers have interpreted what kind of society or the world we should have. That's why this theme reveals in music, arts, literature and even in religion and myths and philosophies and socio-political views and theories. Every cultures have an ideal society which they wish to attain. This came from our desire and drive for perfection in our society. Even the revolutionaries would want to realize it. That's why these struggles have never been absent in the minds and hearts of revolutionaries. The relevance of the study in this research paper is the need for us to rethink for today's global climate with the distrust of the people to attain freedom by leaning to authoritarianism and to rekindle the hope for a better future; The theoretical framework to be use are Hermeneutic phenomenology and Marxists Hermeneutics and which will be considered as a comparative analysis between Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics on " utopia " and the Marxist interpretation of Ernst Bloch's " utopia ". We will find similarities between their interpretations on utopia: a.) Critique of past utopian ideas before Marx; b.) Marxist idea on utopian society; c.) Critique of Hegel's " end of history " ; d.) Idea of the end of human suffering and e.) Their interpretations what will they offer for humanity's hope. The conclusion is by using hermeneutics on phenomena of utopia is explanation of hope for the perfection and liberation of man and his full realization of human freedom.
Work: Past, Present, Future – Some Specters of Marx
Sofia Philosophical Review, 2023
According to three influential French theorists, the ‘‘greatness’’ of Marx (Deleuze) consists in his status as an ‘‘initiator of discursive practices’’ (Foucault) and in his spectral living-on (Derrida). As respectively Foucault and Derrida argue, the discursive effect of Marx’s theorizing gives reason to characterize Marx as a ‘‘transdiscursive’’ author who remains relevant, influential, and determinate for our contemporary discourse. In this paper, I put this hypothesis to the test by turning to some of Marx’s ideas on labour, alienation, and emancipation as they appear in the work of Hannah Arendt and the contemporary political theorist Isabell Lorey. In doing so, this paper addresses the question: is Marx indeed still relevant for our contemporary economic and political discourse?
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2017
From Marx to Althusser, the materialist approach has tended to assume that individuals (that is, workers, proletarians and other social actors) unconsciously reproduce the social structures of capitalism that alienate them. It is assumed that individuals accept the conditions forced upon them and no longer seek to rebel against a world that substantially impoverishes their labour, their spirit and their creativity. In this paper, I suggest that by favouring Marx's concept of alienation almost exclusively, there is a considerable risk that materialist thought will take only a negative path and remain stuck in the very Hegelian idealism that it intends to surpass. Whilst I acknowledge Marx's significance to materialism, I argue that his stance should be combined with that of the anarchist and libertarian French thinker Proudhon. Proudhon presents a conception of the worker as more than just alienated. Workers can also cooperate and experience a reciprocity seemingly at odds with the character of capitalism. Under Proudhon's influence materialism takes a positive turn, enabling us to avoid falling into the utopianism that the theory of social economy employs to critique capitalism-a utopianism that renders its critique even less effective than that of Marx. Today, Proudhonian theory also allows us to envisage the end of capitalism without necessarily rejecting the very concept of work. It thus improves on theories of 'basic income', for example, which persist in seeing in work nothing but negativity.
Utopia, Dystopia and Labor Law Utopía, distopía y derecho del trabajo
Latin American legal Studies, 2022
In this article we will analyze how work is described by some of the most classic utopias, including utopian socialism. We believe that authors such as More, Campanella, Bacon, Andrae, Saint-Simon, Owen, and Fourier, inter alia, when building their utopias must have necessarily referred to work in those nonexistent worlds. Accordingly, those dreams can help illustrate the scope and perspectives of current labor law. In this paper, we take a look at the possible utopian nature of labor law, especially in the unwanted but socially necessary tasks, which are generally invisible.
2020
Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference 'Whither Marxism?' hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida's analyses provoked a large critical literature and invited both consternation and celebration by figures such as Antonio Negri, Wendy Brown and Frederic Jameson. This forum seeks to stimulate new reflections on Derrida, deconstruction and Specters of Marx by considering how the futures past announced by the book have fared after an eventful quarter century. In this fourth group of contributions, Thomas Clément Mercier shows how Der-rida's book, besides questioning reception and influence, yet remains to be read, especially in light of ongoing archival research on Derrida's engagements with Marx's writings in seminars from the 1970s; and Paulo Chamon offers a critical assessment of Derrida's promise of a 'New International' by considering how the book spooks itself in such a way as to raise serious questions in regard to sovereignty and subjectivity.